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We live in an increasingly segmented world, and marketing is no exception. Digital agencies own social, design agencies own marketing collateral, so on and so forth. Some labor under the assumption that a service provider must operate within a single field to claim expertise. Not only is that not true, we’d also do well to recognize the inherent limitations of that philosophy. While CMOs must execute a strategy that fully utilizes every channel, each agency services a specific area and, therefore, cannot act as a true partner in building the best strategy across the full marketing landscape.

With limited resources and budgets, CMOs are forced to pick between a handful of channel-specific agencies that often have competing interests and limited perspectives, all vying for a bigger part of the marketing mix, all incapable (or unwilling) of providing strategic counsel. Naturally, this causes a host of challenges, not least of which are the following:

Marketing Silos

If you’re a large company, you may have the wherewithal to engage agency partners for every necessary channel, or you may be able to create a robust internal agency, migrating that expertise within the organization. If you’re a mid-sized company, however, you likely do not have the resources to cover all your bases. In the case of the former, the CMO may be able to maintain a bird’s eye view of the marketing plan, but in the case of the latter (the mid-sized company), the CMO is left with marketing silos.

No Strategic Input

With many vendors, it is impossible to have everyone involved in both strategy and execution. This dynamic robs the CMO of the strategic expertise that they’re theoretically paying their agencies to provide. For example, an SEO vendor might have a compelling branding insight, but the CMO won’t be receptive to it if the campaign strategy is already set in stone.

Beyond Expertise

If channel-specific partners are tasked with providing strategic counsel, they’re forced beyond their expertise. Their perspectives are invariably filtered through the lens of their channel, which inherently skews their recommendations. A PR agency cannot provide strategic marketing counsel. It can, of course, recommend a media relations campaign, but if a marketing plan is limited, this recommendation may not be appropriate for that particular business objective. The need may be a user group, an email marketing plan, or whatever unique permutation of tactics combined to form a marketing solution tailored that businesses' needs. Different business objectives demand different marketing strategies and different marketing tactics. Without an overarching marketing plan, channel partners are left to grasp at straws.

Self-Serving Marketing

Single-channel vendors want to help your business insofar as it helps themselves. They want to produce results for you but their results may often hinge on one central tenet: Their channel is the answer for you.

As we’ve seen with the recent commercial production bid-rigging scandal, a fragmented vendor list can incentivize agencies to prioritize their own best interests over those of their clients. Within such a dynamic, a vendor is not invested in their client’s overall business performance.

Furthermore, this setup can wreak communications havoc among the team responsible for drawing up the marketing strategy and the many vendors responsible for carrying out those plans.

Single-Channel Metrics

Impressions. Clicks. Open rates. Media buys. Media placements. What do they mean? How do they matter? It depends on your business objective. A billion impressions (be wary of the reporting of impressions, as they can be massaged and inflated), thousands of clicks, a 25% open rate or hundreds of media placements -- all don’t mean anything if they didn’t serve a specific business or sales objective: membership signups, enterprise software installations, etc.

For example, if a display vendor is tasked solely with driving a certain number of impressions, it may pursue that goal at the expense of actually driving sales. If you’ve been following the news this year, you know that even large B2C firms like Procter & Gamble are reconsidering the way they evaluate single-channel metrics like impressions.

Lack of Flexibility

A robust marketing plan is important, but the ability to pivot in reaction to changing market forces, evolving customer behavior or new research-driven insights is not only pragmatic, it’s crucial. Unfortunately, that flexibility is compromised when the marketing plan is divided by a group of single-channel partners. In this scenario, CMOs relinquish an overarching point of view since they depend on channel partners for specific expertise.

Exceptions can be found primarily at large B2C companies where there are enough resources to employ many channel partners and where the customer journey is more clearly defined. Internal resources are sufficient enough to create a comprehensive marketing plan as well as manage vendors across all necessary channels. In some cases, internal resources are so robust that in-house agencies are created, as we’ve seen with major brands like Pepsi and Chobani, eliminating the necessity for external agencies.

The trick is knowing where that line in the sand is: At what point does employing a slew of external agencies stop paying dividends? At what point does an internal agency become less efficient than having a holistic marketing partner? There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to those questions, but whether you’re evaluating the merits of channel-specific partners, a holistic partner or shored-up internal resources, the goal should always be to identify marketing solutions that most cost-effectively and efficiently achieve your business objectives.

The Alternative

As the CMO of a mid-sized company, you’re best served by working with a channel-agnostic partner that will help develop and hone your overall marketing plan. A channel-agnostic partner won’t inflate statistics or favor one tactic over another because it doesn’t benefit them to do so. They’ll be able to provide objective, strategic counsel. That’s not to say that single-vendor channel partners can’t be useful, but it does mean that your starting point should be holistic. Otherwise, you run the risk of being channel-dependent, near-sighted and inefficient.